REVIEWS / PHOTO PRINTERS / HEWLETT PACKARD, PERSONAL SYSTEM GROUP, INDIA

HP Photosmart A626

11 Jan, 2008, 7:26 pm IST | by Gagan Gupta | Photo Printers Photo Printers


PRICE IN INDIA

7,999

TECH2 RATING

8.0

AVERAGE USER RATING

How we test

CONTACT

Hewlett Packard, Personal System Group, India

 NA

 +91 11 2638 8000/ Toll free: 1800 4254 999

 http://www8.hp.com/in/en/home.html

Snapshot printers are gaining a good amount of popularity, which makes perfect sense considering how amazing their print quality is and how user-friendly they generally are. The HP Photosmart A626 is definitely one of the smaller snapshot printers we've seen lately. With its toaster-inspired design and compact size of 11.7 x 13.2 x 25.2 cm, it's easy to pack this one into anything and carry it on your little vacations. It even comes with a nifty handle for toting around!

The glossy piano finish exterior, which seems to be the material of choice for most manufacturers these days, will look smashing at first, but you had better have someone around polish it with a lot of love and devotion to keep it that way. Or else... well, you know what happens to iPods, don't you?

Though the main USB connectivity of the A626 is at the back, the front part can be flipped down for PC-free connectivity options. There are four memory card slots to cover most of the commonly used card standards. Then there's the Pict-Bridge port and the slot for loading the single cartridge this uses. You can also buy upgrades that allow you to connect to the printer via Bluetooth or WLAN.

The main highlight of the printer is its large, adjustable, touchscreen LCD display that comes with a convenient stylus. The display is as user-friendly as it gets, and the touchscreen options help reduce the button clutter on the printer body.

In our performance tests we printed pictures of various types (taken from D-SLRs, consumer cameras, phone cameras, artwork etc), at the maximum resolution (1200 dpi) until the prints started to show signs of ink depletion. Only a couple of prints were taken in normal print mode, for quality determination. All the tests were done on 4x6 inch glossy photo paper.

Tags: Printer , inkjet

Would you buy it?




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Features
The features component of the score is rated based on the kind of features present on a particular product. Features are a big part of what people look for when they’re buying a new product such as a phone or a camera.

Performance
The performance score is derived from the benchmarks and tests run on the product. In case of the subjective scores, an average of the scores given by the group of reviewers is considered.

Build Quality
The build quality of a product is important so that it doesn’t fall apart after some use. The build quality scores from the way the product is designed and the kind of materials used in the product.

Value
Value for money comes from the fact that a cheap product is able to provide most of the performance of a higher priced product. Once again, value for money is judged by comparing pricing and performance of products in a particular price range or category. 

There are many other aspects of the product that are looked at such as the bundled software and accessories. All of these scores are aggregated together to form the final score.

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